Allentown Guard unit divided to keep supplies flowing

Under the drone of behemoth gray C-130s buzzing on a nearby landing strip, Spc. Megan Santiago of Coplay looks out onto the horizon and says hopefully, "One of them has got to be ours."

The holding pattern the Pennsylvania Army National Guard's 213th Area Support Group has been in since arriving at Bagram Air Base more than a week ago is beginning to break.

Santiago and some of her fellow soldiers in the 213th, whose headquarters are in Allentown, are again on the move. The men and women who trained together for more than three months at Fort Dix, N.J., are being divided and spread out over air bases in Bagram, Kabul and Kandahar in Afghanistan and Karshi-Kharnabad, known as K2, in Uzbekistan.

But this group is going nowhere unless it can prevent the mountain of duffel bags from toppling off the pallet it has been stacking for the last hour under a blazing sun. Their belongings must accompany them on the plane, and no one is thrilled at the thought of possibly having to restack the bags.

With a massive heave-ho, the soldiers push mightily against the pyramid they built, and it manages to defy gravity and stay bound and upright. They have one more hurdle to clear -- the weight limit, and it doesn't look good. But when a forklift dives in and picks up the pallet, it registers at 48,000 pounds, just under the 50,000- pound limit.

The group retreats from the unforgiving heat and heads toward a utilitarian concrete building that serves as a kind of airport waiting room, except there are no colorful posters in this room beckoning travelers to exciting locations such as Paris, London or Rome. No, what you get in a combat zone in a desert clime are nifty 3D displays on various types of land mines only steps outside the door and a colorful poster of what a nasty cobra bite to the finger looks like.

As at other airports, there is an array of travelers from foreign countries, in this case, soldiers from other coalition countries fighting the war on terrorism. In this waiting room, you're likely to find soldiers reading the Stars and Stripes military newspaper, napping, or staring mindlessly after a night of little sleep.

Some of the 213th en route to K2 on Sunday are seated at a long table next to what amounts to a library -- a wall of bookshelves filled with romance novels, thrillers and other pulp fiction paperbacks. Maj. Almedia Parham of Philadelphia is absorbed in Ahmed Rashid's book, "Taliban."

Another group will leave for Kabul the next day in a convoy of vehicles. They gather for a last-minute briefing and join in a moment of prayer with Chaplain Maj. Dale Dibernardinis.

This subsection of the 213th headed to K2 will work under the leadership of Lt. Col. Dennis DeMara of Lehighton, who will be the base commander.

"We will start RIP," says DeMara, who like most in the military speaks in acronyms so as not to waste any time. "Relief in place" is what he said in shorthand, and what he means in plain English is his unit will replace another unit already there.

"I think everyone is just anxious to get to their final destination," DeMara said.

Members of the 213th are master logisticians who make sure the movement of massive quantities of supplies goes as smoothly as possible.

"It's been a challenge living out of a duffel bag, especially with the soldiers not knowing what they're going to do," DeMara says. "But it's all coming together."